


Risks and Consequences

by glorious_spoon



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Morning After, Multi, Period-Typical Homophobia, Relationship Negotiation, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:00:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23918692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: Jack was a man who guarded his heart like a hand of poker, kept it close until he was sure of the stakes, but he had tells, for those who knew him. No wonder he’d fled. Being exposed like that would have been awful in any circumstances; at least she and Daniel had been sure of each other.
Relationships: Peggy Carter/Daniel Sousa/Jack Thompson
Comments: 32
Kudos: 103
Collections: SSR Confidential 2020





	Risks and Consequences

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sholio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/gifts).



Peggy came awake slowly, various discomforts making themselves known bit by unpleasant bit. There was a sharp ache in the back of her sinuses and a crick in her neck; she seemed to have fallen asleep half-seated, and she was overly warm, pressed against a bare, too-hot body with a scratchy blanket thrown haphazardly over her. The soft sound of snoring filled the stuffy air.

It took her several minutes to gather the fortitude to pry her gummy eyelids open and blink dazedly at her surroundings. Across from her was a wall papered in blue and a pair of windows with the lace curtains drawn, diffusing the majority of the morning sunlight into a soft, golden glow. A coffee table held drifts of papers and open file folders; more were scattered about the floor, along with several items of clothing. A crutch leaned drunkenly against the side table as though it had been tossed there.

Daniel’s living room. Daniel’s couch. It certainly wasn’t the first time she’d dozed off in this spot, but generally she didn’t do so in the nude. And generally, she didn’t overindulge in drink enough to account for this level of foggy-headedness. What on earth _had_ they gotten up to—?

Well, that was fairly obvious, and also not unprecedented. But they could have at least used the bed.

There was a snuffling noise, an arm curling loosely around her shoulders, sticky with sweat, and it was only then that she realized that the person she was currently cuddled up against in the nude, on Daniel’s couch, was assuredly _not_ Daniel.

Jack was sprawled against the cushions, his head tilted back, snoring softly. The morning sunlight striped across his face and caught in his eyelashes and the blond stubble shading his jaw. An arm was slung over his torso from the other side: a dusting of dark hair and a faint silvery scar across the knuckles, and sure enough when she levered herself up—moving carefully, so as not to disturb either of them—there was Daniel tucked up against Jack’s other side, his hair a riot of dark curls, fast asleep. And, as was very clear from the way the afghan had slid down around his hips, just as naked as they were.

As she watched, his nose wrinkled. He shifted, started to roll, then caught himself with a sharp jerk before he could tumble off the edge of the couch. His head lifted, his expression soft and sleepily baffled as he looked up at her.

“Good morning,” Peggy said in a bare whisper. Daniel stared at her for a moment, and she could actually see the moment when the penny dropped. His eyes widened slightly; he pulled his hand away from Jack’s sleeping body as if he’d suddenly found himself touching a hot stove.

“Hi,” he whispered back, in a blank, shocked tone that more or less matched Peggy’s feelings. Her memory of the night before was starting to percolate in, in flashes of heat and bare skin and desperation. She couldn’t tell by Daniel’s face if he was experiencing the same thing, or if he’d just put together the obvious conclusion from their present circumstances.

The raid last night. That damned shipping container.

It would almost have been better, she thought with a certain amount of morbid humor, if it had taken effect immediately. If they’d all descended into mindless lust on the spot, the moment Jack had pried open one crate among many and found a few dozen smashed vials coated in a fine powdery residue, that would have been—well, awful, actually. But simpler.

Instead, they’d packed away the crate and put it into evidence along with all the rest. Jack had made some witticism about dumb Nazi spies and the United States Postal Service. They’d all scrubbed their hands thoroughly and bagged up their gear and come back here, the way they usually did when Jack was in Los Angeles. Ostensibly to go over the last quarter’s financials over a late dinner, but in reality—

In reality, the three of them had been orbiting around the fragile, hopeful possibility of _something_ for a long time now. Jack always got a hotel room when he flew in, but he nearly always ended up sleeping in Daniel’s spare room. She’d become used to the sight of him in the kitchen early in the morning, to the way he watched them both when he thought they weren’t paying attention. There was an easy domesticity to those mornings, an intimacy; she’d long since stopped trying to hide the fact that she spent most nights in Daniel’s bed, and sometimes she would perch on the counter with a cup of tea and watch the two of them trade affectionate insults over coffee and mission briefings and think maybe, just maybe…

She and Daniel had discussed it, in the most oblique and cautious of terms, but neither of them had found the right moment or the right words to broach the subject with Jack.

And now this.

Beneath her palm, Jack shifted. His eyes squinched like even the filtered light was hurting them—Peggy sympathized—then opened.

Peggy withdrew her hand, cheeks flaming. For a long, terribly awkward moment, none of them said anything, and then Jack started to sit up, stopped, and said in a very strange voice, “I need my arm back, Sousa.”

Daniel flinched, muttered, “Right, sorry,” and sat up. Jack slid off the couch, taking the afghan with him; Daniel managed to grab a corner of it to pull up over his groin, leaving Peggy on the bare cushion. She pulled her knees up, but didn’t bother trying to shield herself beyond that. Daniel had seen it all before, and Jack—

Well, Jack had certainly seen it all last night. And he wasn’t looking at her in any case. He was dressing with a speed that bordered on supernatural, trousers already on, his shirt—or _a_ shirt at any rate; she thought it might actually belong to Daniel—half-buttoned already. His hair was an appalling mess, a blotchy flush high in his cheeks. Before last night, she would have said that it was the most unkempt she’d ever seen him.

Last night, she’d tangled her hands in his hair to drag him up into a biting kiss with Daniel snugged against her back and breathing shakily into her neck—

“Jack,” she started to say.

“Either of you know where my shoes ended up?” he interrupted. And then, before either of them could answer, he located them by the door and yanked them onto his feet without even bothering to unlace them first. “Never mind, got ‘em.”

Daniel started to stand, then stopped, as though he’d just remembered that he was naked and his prosthesis was halfway across the room, still tangled up with his trousers under the coffee table. Jack wasn’t slowing in any case. He dug in his pocket and came up with a set of keys, reached for the door handle, then paused, turning back to aim a brittle grin their way without meeting either of their eyes.

“So, I’m thinking we can all agree to keep this one out of the case file huh? I’ll get on the horn with the lab rats and make sure they keep that crate in containment until we can get an expert in. Last thing we need is to set off an accidental orgy in the SSR offices.” He laughed; it had a brightly false sound to it. “Guess I’ll see you around.”

Before either of them could respond, he slipped out the front door, pulling it firmly shut behind him. A moment later, the car he’d had parked out front for the better part of a week started, then pulled away from the curb.

In the echoing silence that remained, Daniel sank back against the couch, put both his hands over his face, and said, “ _Jesus._ ”

“I think,” Peggy said slowly, “that perhaps we all should have gone to the infirmary last night to get checked out.”

Daniel let out a cracked sort of laugh, muffled by his palms. “You think? Holy hell. I’m surprised he didn’t deck me.”

Peggy sighed, then moved closer, nestling against his side and resting her cheek against his bare shoulder. After a moment, his arm came around her, and she felt him sigh against her hair. There were love bites scattered down the side of his throat; some of them were Peggy’s doing, but not all. The beard burn certainly wasn’t. He looked thoroughly debauched, and she imagined she looked much the same.

“I’m not,” she said.

Daniel lifted his head enough to give her a sidelong glance. “How much do you remember?”

“Nearly everything, I think.”

The drug hadn’t taken effect until after they were back at the house. Or—no, that wasn’t quite true. She remembered the squirming, feverish arousal building for the entire car ride, but at the time she’d taken it for nothing other than adrenaline and the buzzy, too-alert exhaustion of a long stake-out. She didn’t know if Daniel and Jack had been experiencing the same thing, although in retrospect she thought they must have.

They had been inside, at any rate, when the dizzying wash of heat broke over her and made it suddenly seem like a good idea to climb into Daniel’s lap with Jack right there on the couch beside them, not scandalized but tilting toward them as if drawn by an invisible thread.

She couldn’t remember now which one of them had reached out first, but she remembered that he’d fallen into their arms the moment that line was crossed. That he’d cupped Daniel’s face between his hands and kissed him like it was the only thing that mattered.

Daniel’s head was tilted back, his eyes closed, his profile inscrutable. In the warm golden light coming in through the window, he looked like a sculpture of a Roman general, all curling hair and heroic jawline. She touched his cheek gently, turned him toward her. “He wouldn’t have hit you.”

He gave her a searching look, then sighed. “Yeah, okay. Maybe not. Look, Peggy, last night—”

“Last night was not how that should have happened between the three of us, I quite agree.” She took a breath, then said, carefully, “But I didn’t do anything that I wouldn’t have wanted to do in other circumstances, and I don’t believe you did either.”

Daniel’s sudden laugh had an edge to it, uneasy and self-mocking. “No. No, I didn’t.”

“We need to talk to Jack.”

“Pretty sure if he wanted to talk, he wouldn’t have lit out of here like his tail was on fire.”

“Do you really think he left because he didn’t want any of—of that? I suspect it’s rather the opposite.”

Daniel was silent for a moment, and Peggy wondered if he was remembering the same things she was. Not the desperate frenzy of their coupling last night, but earlier: those warm, fond looks over breakfast or dreadful late-night takeout, the playful teasing and hidden smiles. Jack was a man who guarded his heart like a hand of poker, kept it close until he was sure of the stakes, but he had tells, for those who knew him.

No wonder he’d fled. Being exposed like that would have been awful in any circumstances; at least she and Daniel had been sure of each other.

Daniel reached for his crutch and pulled himself upright, then leaned down to detangle his prosthesis from his trousers and sock. There was something so lovely about him in that moment, mussed and tired and anxious, unselfconsciously naked in the gentle morning light. “You know he’s gonna be on the next flight back to New York.”

“I do know that. I propose we intervene.”

“What if you’re wrong about all this?”

“Well,” Peggy said, wrapping her arms around her legs and resting her chin on her knees. That was a possibility. She had been wrong about any number of important things before. And Jack was, had always been, a wild card in the deck. “Then at least we’ll know.”

“Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead?”

“I’ve never allowed conventional wisdom to get in the way of something I really wanted, how’s that?”

“That’s definitely true,” Daniel said, with a sort of exasperated fondness that made her smile up at him. He started to straighten, then paused and let out a short bark of laughter and leaned down to pick something up off the floor.

“What is it?” Peggy asked.

“Left his wallet here,” he said, holding up the item in question. It was indeed a wallet, finely made of smooth brown leather. It must have fallen out of Jack’s trousers at some point between Daniel shoving them off him and Peggy hauling the pair of them down onto the couch last night, and Jack had been in too much of a rush to notice this morning.

“Well,” Peggy said. “We shall have to return it to him, then.”

Daniel gave her a rueful smile, then said, “Yeah, okay. I just hope like hell you know what you’re doing.”

“So do I,” she said, and slipped off the couch to go get dressed.

* * *

Jack answered the door on the second knock, shaved and combed and neatly dressed in a freshly pressed suit, a glossy smile on his face. It was a much better mask than the one he’d been wearing when he left; it barely faltered when he saw them.

“Hey, Jack,” Daniel said, with a credible effort at lightness.

“Gotta be honest, I wasn’t expecting to see you two again,” Jack said, after a long pause. “I’m about to head out—”

“You forgot your wallet,” Peggy said bluntly, holding it out to him. Color flared in his cheeks; he took it delicately, as though afraid it might burn him. “May we come in?”

There was a moment where she thought he might just slam the door in their faces, but then he shrugged and stood aside to let them pass. Peggy wanted to reach for Daniel’s hand, but she thought that it might give the wrong impression. She settled for gripping the strap of her handbag tightly instead as she stepped inside.

The suite was done up in a modish style and looked untouched, which made sense considering that she didn’t think Jack had slept in it even once since he’d checked in nearly a week ago. Jack pulled the door shut behind them and then moved quickly into the room, like he thought one of them might try to grab at him, or perhaps throw a punch. “So. Marge and Sousa. What can I do for you?”

“Really, Jack?” Daniel said dryly, moving into the room as well. “That’s how you’re gonna play this?”

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “What do you want, huh? You want to talk about it? Sure, let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about all the containment measures that we disregarded last night, for starters.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Peggy interjected. “We followed proper procedure. There was no indication of chemical weaponry, or we’d have had a lab team in.”

“Yeah, and what a great idea that would have been. I could be doing paperwork for half a dozen traumatized lab geeks instead of—”

“Oh, stop it,” she interrupted sharply. Jack shut up as though he’d been slapped, and Peggy forced herself to gentle her tone. “None of us could have known.”

“Still my responsibility. There. Happy now?”

“Jack—” She considered her next words carefully, with a feeling like she was braced on the edge of a precipice, or perhaps an air jump over enemy terrain, with no certainty of a safe landing. But the hope of it, at least. She had to hope that there was a way back from this. Or—just maybe—a way forward. “We’re not here to cast blame, or to pick a fight. We just want to talk.”

He closed his eyes briefly, looking rather like a man about to face a firing squad, then said, “Yeah, okay. Shoot.”

Daniel let out a soft, exasperated noise, moving into the room. “You don’t make anything easy, do you?”

“Well, I figure _you_ can’t exactly turn me in to the morality squad without implicating yourself in the process, and vice versa. So that’s easy, isn’t it? Both of us are in the same boat. Now, Carter, on the other hand—”

Peggy winced. That was a dimension to all this that affected Daniel and Jack far more than it did her. She knew that Daniel had been with men before, in the Army. She wasn’t sure if Jack had, although last night he’d displayed a… degree of familiarity with the mechanics that suggested it wasn’t the first time. “This isn’t a shakedown, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No,” Jack conceded. “That’d be more my style than yours, wouldn’t it?”

“Dear God,” Peggy sighed. Unaccountably, she found her lips twitching into a smile. “You are utterly insufferable.”

“Yeah, kinda makes me wonder why you two followed me back here,” he said, with a brief, sharp grin that faded fast. “Look, we were all drugged, right? Just like that time Sousa tried to strangle me. Doesn’t have to mean anything.”

Daniel snorted. “Believe me, I’ve thought about strangling you plenty of times when I wasn’t drugged.”

“I bet. You ever thought about going to bed with me when you weren’t drugged?”

“Yeah,” Daniel said frankly. His knuckles were white where he gripped the handle of his crutch, but his tone was even. “I have. Since you asked.”

“Christ. You can’t just—” Jack rubbed his hand over his mouth. “What about you, Carter? What’s your angle here?”

“Must everything be about working an angle?” Peggy asked. She touched Daniel’s tense shoulder briefly, then settled her hand on Jack’s arm. “I think perhaps we should have talked about this a long time ago. Before—”

“Before we all had a drug-induced fuck on your boyfriend’s couch?” Jack finished, with a deliberate sort of blunt crudeness. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Daniel flinch slightly.

“Yes,” Peggy said, refusing to be put off. “Precisely that.”

“I don’t know what there is to talk about.”

“Whether or not you would have wanted any of that had drugs not been involved, for a start.”

Jack shrugged off her hand and took a few steps back, a hard smile firmly back in place. “Gotta tell you, this is starting to feel like an interrogation all of a sudden.”

“Oh, for the love of— _I_ would have. There. Are you happy now? I would have, and so would Daniel. There’s our cards on the table. And I think you would have as well, and maybe I’m wrong about that, but—”

“You’re not,” Jack said. He seemed to deflate suddenly, all of the brittle tension draining out of him all at once. He laughed shortly, then sank onto the edge of the bed. “Goddamn Peggy Carter. When are you ever wrong about anything?”

“It’s been known to happen,” Peggy offered, a small tendril of hope rising up inside her.

“Yeah, right. Once in a blue moon, maybe.” He sighed and dropped his hands in his lap, looking up at them. “Why are you two here, really?”

“To return your wallet,” Peggy said, and smiled slightly when he rolled his eyes. “And because we didn’t want you to go back to New York with this still hanging between us. And—to ask you what _you_ want to happen next.”

“You already know what I want. Clearly. Doesn’t mean that’s what’s gonna happen.”

Peggy glanced at Daniel. He raised his eyebrows slightly, then tilted his head in a _go ahead_ sort of gesture. Jack looked between them, then up at Peggy when she crossed over to stand before him. His eyes were guarded, his lips slightly parted. There was a red mark just above his collar that Peggy remembered sucking into his skin last night while Daniel was—otherwise occupied. The sight of it sent a prickle of heat through her that had nothing whatsoever to do with black-market aphrodisiacs.

“What if it did?” she asked.

Jack smiled up at her, crooked and resigned. “World doesn’t work like that, Marge.”

“Sometimes, actually, it does,” she said, and leaned down to kiss him lightly on the mouth.

He hesitated for only the briefest of moments before kissing her back. There was none of last night’s rough desperation to it. That had been a heated clash of teeth and tongues, both of them—all three of them—too wound up to slow down and savor any part of it. This was soft and—careful, almost. Jack’s fingers ghosted over her cheek, and he sighed against her lips as she pulled back.

Daniel’s crutch made a soft noise on the carpet as he moved closer, then sat down on the edge of the bed as well, not touching but within arm’s reach. Jack looked at him warily. “Sousa.” He cleared his throat. “Daniel.”

“It’s your call, Jack,” Daniel said quietly. “Like Peggy said. Our cards are on the table. But if you want to forget about all this, say the word and that’s what we’ll do.”

“And if I don’t?” Jack asked, something raw in his voice. “You’re telling me that’s something you want?”

“I did last night. We both did.”

“Yeah, well, you weren’t exactly in your right mind last night.”

“I am now. So’s Peggy. The only question is what you want.”

“That’s not the only question. What you’re talking about, there’s risks. Consequences. Somebody has to think about that, if you two won’t. Why do you think I never—”

He broke off. One of his hands curled on his knee, gripping the joint like he was looking for some kind of mooring. Peggy wanted to reach out for him again, but she didn’t. She’d already pushed as far as she should. Farther, perhaps.

Finally, he took a breath, nodded once, then said slowly, “Say we do this. What then?”

“Well, I’m not suggesting that we all tumble back into bed together right this moment,” Peggy said, a knot of tension she hadn’t even been completely aware of unwinding. Her stomach gurgled, and she added, “For one thing, I haven’t had any breakfast yet.”

Daniel let out a startled laugh; Jack’s shoulders slumped, then shook briefly. When he looked up, the tension had eased out of his face, leaving a hopeful warmth that made him look younger somehow than he had a moment ago. "Breakfast, huh? You know, there's a pretty good diner right down the block."

"You mean that place with the weird-looking cactus on the sign?" Daniel asked.

"That's the one. Best pancakes I ever had." Jack hesitated, then said, "My treat, if you want."

“Sounds good to me,” Daniel said. “Peggy?”

“Pancakes would be wonderful.”

He started to rise. She saw Jack hesitate, then reach out to catch Daniel’s elbow. “Hey. Sousa.”

Daniel stilled immediately. “Yeah?"

“Just—” Jack shook his head, then cupped Daniel’s chin and kissed him, quick and careful, in much the way he’d just kissed Peggy a minute ago. There was a flicker of nerves visible on his face when he pulled back, hidden almost immediately, but Daniel wore a soft kind of look that Peggy didn’t think she’d seen directed at anyone other than perhaps—well, her. An aching fondness curled in her chest at the sight of them. “Just that.”

“Yeah, okay,” Daniel said after a moment, smiling. And then, “You said something about pancakes.”

Jack’s face broke into a sudden, boyish grin. “Pancakes it is.”

He accepted the hand up that Peggy offered him, then reached down to pull Daniel up as well, and didn’t let go.


End file.
